Lyndon Johnson once observed that “power is where power goes.” In his new book, Jared Cohen deftly explores what the most powerful men in the world do after the power is gone. Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House examines the post-presidential careers of seven very different former chief executives of the nation.
Cohen seeks to answer a not-so-simple question: What do men do after they’ve wielded tremendous power? What comes next? The American political system is rare in that presidents are term limited, first by a tradition set by George Washington and later by law. Franklin D. Roosevelt remains the only president to serve more than two terms. (He died during his fourth term.) And thanks to the 22nd Amendment, approved by Congress in 1947, he will very likely be the last.
America’s founders were conscious of the potential problem posed by ex-presidents. Alexander Hamilton asked, “Would it promote the peace of the community or the stability of the government to have half a dozen men who had had credit enough to be raised to the seat of the supreme magistracy, wandering among the people like discontented ghosts, and sighing for a place which they were destined never more to possess?”
The answer to Hamilton’s query seems to be a self-evident “no.” Yet while some former presidents have lived tortured existences after exiting office — the alcoholic Franklin Pierce comes to mind — not a few have managed to find success after the White House.
Those who have obtained the highest office in the land are, of course, unusual men. As Cohen observes, “Former presidents don’t lose their drive or ambition the day they leave office. … They made history in the White House, and many of them want to make it after leaving.” And, “they have, for more than two hundred years.”
Thomas Jefferson’s post-presidency was successful, in part because he pursued a long-standing goal that predated his ascension to the Oval Office. Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence, the first secretary of state, and the third president of the United States. His two-term presidency was followed by another sixteen years of rule by his chosen successors. Yet he didn’t list any of these accomplishments on his tombstone. Instead, Jefferson, a child of the Enlightenment, preferred to be seen as an educator. Long before his electoral victory in 1800, he dreamed of founding a college. And after leaving office in 1809, the lanky Virginian spent years building what became the University of Virginia. Jefferson encountered numerous obstacles along the way, but he lived to see the institution built and classes begin.
Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the declaration and several hours before his friend, rival, and predecessor in office, John Adams. At the time, the presidency was occupied by Adam’s eldest son, John Quincy, who was two years into a very unhappy single term in office. John Quincy Adams didn’t experience Jefferson’s success in the presidency. But as Cohen documents, Adams would himself break new ground following his ejection from office in 1828.
John Quincy Adams’s presidency, Cohen argues, was but an “intermission between two of the most impressive careers in public life in American history.” Before the presidency, Adams had served as a senator and diplomat. As secretary of state for the Monroe administration, Adams authored the Monroe Doctrine, shaping foreign policy for a generation. Stern, aloof, and prone to moralizing, Adams was an unpopular president. He left office a bitter man.
But Adams soon found himself elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, a substantially less prestigious, and less powerful, position than president, secretary of state, or senator. But by taking up the mantle of a single cause, abolitionism, Adams found both influence and respect. Northern abolitionists grew to love Adams, while proponents of the slaveholding South grew to detest him, resenting his ability to outsmart and outmaneuver them. Over the course of nine terms, Adams grew in office, becoming “Washington’s most influential abolitionist a generation before Emancipation.”
Adams and Jefferson are well-known figures in American history. However, where Life After Power really shines is in the chapters on two lesser-known ones: Grover Cleveland and William Howard Taft.
Cleveland was extremely popular in his own era. He enjoyed a meteoric rise, skyrocketing from mayor of Buffalo to governor of New York to the Oval Office in less than four years. Renowned for his honesty in an era of Gilded Age corruption, he remains the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. Cleveland is thus unique for the purposes of the book at hand in that he had two post-presidencies.
During the first, he enjoyed domestic bliss with his young wife, Frances, whose beauty and charisma made her the Jackie Kennedy of her day. Yet Cleveland felt compelled to run again, successfully defeating Benjamin Harrison. His second term was riven with personal health problems, a faltering economy, and domestic unrest. By its conclusion, Cleveland was left a man apart; he no longer felt aligned with either political party. His final post-presidency was spent at Princeton University, where the Clevelands made their home — and where Grover would battle with the college’s imperious president, Woodrow Wilson. Cleveland serves as sort of a cautionary tale: a man who went once more into the breach and probably regretted it.
Taft is another story entirely. The son of Ulysses Grant’s attorney general, Taft grew up with one sole desire: to be on the Supreme Court. Taft continually deferred his dream of being on the court, even declining numerous offers of an appointment. Brilliant, hardworking, and well liked, he became a sort of co-president to Theodore Roosevelt, often serving as the administration’s troubleshooter. Taft’s wife and brothers wanted him to be president. So too did Roosevelt, who pushed for Taft to be his successor. Thanks to familial pressure and a sense of obligation, Taft agreed. Unsurprisingly, he did not enjoy the presidency.
But Taft never gave up his dream. Cohen highlights Taft’s careful plotting to obtain a seat on the court. Eventually he was appointed chief justice in 1921 and worked to transform the institution he loved. The Taft who emerges in Life After Power is tenacious and far cannier than the way he is often caricatured, as an amiable, overweight dunce.
In his final two chapters, Cohen examines the post-presidencies of Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush. The two took opposite approaches to their time out of office. Carter continued to influence and shape policy, sometimes to the chagrin of his successors. By contrast, Bush largely abandoned politics altogether, choosing to leave the field and take up painting while highlighting the stories of immigrants and veterans. Bush’s “post-politics” approach, Cohen notes, has its own merits.
Taken together, these stories of the post-presidency show that ambition, satisfied, delivers different things to the very different personalities that have occupied the highest office in American politics — plenty of options beyond that of becoming the discontented ghosts Hamilton feared.
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Sean Durns is a Washington, D.C.-based foreign affairs analyst. His views are his own.